Since then, I’ve literally flown hundreds of times. And all over the world.

In fact, I now live in London. And I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve jetted between the UK and Australia. I’d guess it’s somewhere between 20 and 30 round trips.

During that time, I’ve tried and tested a lot of mind hacks designed to make flying easier.

So, if you hate flying, here’s what I suggest you do.

Step 1: Build the right mindset

Beating your fear of flying is tough. And frustratingly slow.

To succeed, you need balls. And the ability to handle a roller-coaster ride of success and failure.

That’s why a determination to win is a must.

But how do you get that determination?

The trick is to view the process as an exciting game. Not a terrifying chore.

Which means you need to apply the same energy and enthusiasm as you would if learning a new sport, instrument or language.

Once you see the process this way, your motivation levels will rocket. As will your ability to handle the inevitable setbacks.

Step 2: Become less anxious

One of the best ways to ease your fear of flying is to reduce your ‘background’ anxiety levels. What do I mean by ‘background’ anxiety?

I mean the non-specific anxiety you’re carrying around 24/7. Why?

Because in my experience, people who have a fear of flying tend to have higher background anxiety levels than others. That means they react more fearfully to ALL of life’s stressful events.

For example, imagine that a door at home slams shut unexpectedly. The person with the highest background anxiety will freak out more than anyone else in the room.

By reducing your background anxiety levels, EVERYTHING about flying will seem less scary.

As an example, consider turbulence. If your background anxiety was lower, you’d feel less anxious when your plane was bumping around. You’d also feel less nervous when simply THINKING about turbulence.

What’s the trick to slashing your background anxiety?

It’s practicing a relaxation technique. Daily.

I do mindful meditation. But I started with progressive muscle relaxation.

It doesn’t matter which one you use — as long as it helps you relax. What DOES matter is doing it every day. 20 minutes is ideal. But 5 minutes is WAY better than nothing.

Step 3: Learn how flying works

To beat your fear effectively, you need to bone up on how planes are built. And how they work.

In particular, you need to fill your head with FACTS about the stuff that worries you most. Why?

Because your fears are triggered when negative thoughts pop into your head. Especially so-called ‘what if’ thoughts. These are thoughts like ‘What if the engines fail when we take off?’.

You CAN’T stop these negative thoughts creeping into your head. But you CAN stop them making you panicky. How?

By challenging them with facts. For example, once you understand why turbulence ISN’T an issue for planes, you can question your negative thoughts about turbulence as they pop into your head.

Step 4: Start with baby steps

I’m a big believer in what psychologists call the ‘gradual exposure’ technique.

The idea is that you expose yourself to the thing you fear — but in increments. For example, if you had a fear of heights, you wouldn’t head to the top of a skyscraper on Day 1 of your treatment.

Instead, you might just hang out on the ground floor until you felt comfortable with the idea of even being in a tall building. Then on Day 2, you might push the envelope a bit by going to the first floor.

You’d rinse and repeat until you finally made it to the top.

Likewise with flying, you should start by tackling the thing that worries you least. For example, let’s say your jitters normally start when you turn up at the terminal to catch a flight.

In that case, you should kick off your treatment by visiting the airport simply to hang out in a terminal. You’re not flying anywhere — your objective is simply to spend SO much time there that it no longer stresses you out.

For many people, this would demand more than one visit. If that sounds dull, that’s what it’s SUPPOSED to be.

After all, the objective of each stage of therapy is to achieve a state of utter boredom.

Once a feared situation becomes a yawn-fest, you need to level up to the next thing in your hierarchy of fear. For example, now that you’re happy with being in a terminal, you might want to tackle boarding an aircraft.

Step 5: Use visualisation techniques

One problem with the gradual exposure technique is that you can’t gradually expose yourself to flying. After all, once you step on an actual plane, you’re obviously committed to the whole flight.

Luckily, visualisation provides a work-around.

The idea is to plonk yourself down somewhere safe (such as at home). Next, you imagine yourself in a situation you find scary. Like walking through an airbridge towards the plane door.

Then, as negative thoughts pop into your head, you challenge them with those facts you picked up earlier.

The idea is to do this over and over until the situation you’re visualising no longer feels threatening.

This may sound lame. But it really works. And it’s a great way to practice the art of challenging negative thoughts.

Step 6: Focused flying

Once you’ve got the above skills sorted, you need to expose yourself to actual flights.

However, you don’t want to just get on planes and pray things turn out better than they used to.

Instead, you need to do what I call ‘focused flying’. What does this mean?

It means experiencing your flights in a very deliberate way. For example, let’s say you hate take-offs.

Before you take a focused flight, you spend time learning what ACTUALLY happens during the take-off. In other words, you get your head around the sounds, sights and sensations. And WHY they happen.

Armed with that knowledge, you board your flight and DELIBERATLY observe those sounds, sights and sensations as they occur.

By doing this, you take the mystery out of the process. Suddenly, stuff that once seemed foreign and scary now becomes logical and reassuring.

How should you start your focused flying program?

I suggest you start with the kind of flights that worry you least. For example, short daytime ones.

Once you’ve gotten comfy with these, you need to move on to longer flights. Or flights that feature stuff that makes you nervous (such as flying over water).

The idea is to progressively expose yourself to all your old fears until none of them worry you.

Good response, Unity. Granted it is an irrational fear, but I try to not to be ruled by emotions and irrationality. Obviously I'm male, which helps :-) I guess everyone is different and I should remember that, but it's hard to empathise when I see people acting illogically.

Might be a surprise to you, but your gender gives you no advantage in avoiding irrationality.
You'd realise your two-step advice would be useless after talking to, for example, some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
1) You'd get beaten to a pulp before you could finish telling them to harden up
2) Some of these people cannot bring themselves to cross the road, let alone get on a plane.

People act illogically because we are not, by nature, logical beings, we are emotionally based. Logic is a learned process, taught to us by adults.
Without training (a logical process) most people will revert to emotional based responses in a stressful situation, which is exactly what this article is describing .

Given barely a week can go by without report(s) of someone getting punched unconscious in an unprovoked attack, or road rage incident shows that men are as prone to making irrational and emotional decisions as women, just with a more damaging impact and without the excuse of having a period.

Why is it irrational or illogical? If you have a fear of falling from the height that an aircraft reaches, you're 100% more likely of that occurring if you take a flight. Seems both rational and logical to me. Granted, it's not likely to happen but it's 100% more likely to happen than if you choose not to fly.

Whoa, harsh. You obviously haven't suffered from, or know anyone who suffers from panic attacks. It's usually irrational and debilitating, and a medical condition. Just saying "man up" is not helpful to people who have a real fear or have an anxiety disorder.

As someone who has a fear of flying, your comment is moronic, judgmental and very narrow minded. Anxiety is a serious form of mental illness that can cause serious impacts with everyday life, including what is listed above.

People like you are causing people with these serious mental conditions to not want to be open about their issues, making them think they should be ashamed with what they have, as statements like yours are bullying, downright rude and offensive.